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Gender Trouble: Feminism And The Subversion Of Identity

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Queer theory was developed by Judith Butler in her post-modern feminist text, “Gender Trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity” (Horitar, 2015). She discussed the role that gender and sexual orientation play in the way in which society uses this concepts in order to place individuals in a specific category on the basis on how they behave (Guantlett, 1998; Horitar, 2015). This theory examines the diverse ways in which current beliefs serves to reintegrate societal anticipations of gender identity, appearance and sexuality, it also offers a negotiation for the fragmentation of constructed gender categories (Horitar, 2015).
According to Western society, sex defines your particular gender (feminine or masculine) which in turn defines your true identity, for example a biological female is considered to be a women who is anticipated, by their society, to be more sensitive and nurturing than a man and who needs a sensual relationship with the opposite sex (Horitar, 2015). This notion was rejected by Butler because according to her gender should be regarded as a performance and not as a category (Guantlett, 1998; Horitar, 2015). Queer theory intends to observe why Western society has produced this association between sex, gender and identity and what consequences could rise from this constructed band (Horitar, 2015; McLelland, 2005).
The concept of queer theory became a division of study since 1991 (Harris, 2005) and evolved from two major influences namely, feminist

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